exo_squadfandomcom-20200214-history
User talk:Koveras Alvane
Welcome Hi, welcome to Exo-Squad Wiki! Thanks for your edit to the Templage:Cleanup page. Please leave a message on my talk page if I can help with anything! -- Maverike prime (Talk) 08:25, February 15, 2010 Need an info-box hey Koveras, I hope you can help me out with this one. I want to make an info box that I can use to list the E-frames a given character piloted through out the course of series. The problem I'm running into is making it dynamic, since all the characters didn't pilot the same number of E-frames. Like Phaeton only piloted his Command E-frame, while Marsh piloted like 6 different E-frames. How can I make that? I may be crazy, and mental, but I get the job done! 21:47, March 21, 2010 (UTC) : Do you really need an infobox for that? We can just put the list into the existing Template:Infobox Character with the parameter "e-frames". I've added it to the code, now you can simply add following code to the infoboxes: | e-frames = E-frame 1 E-frame 2 etc. : It will add the list of the E-frames directly to the character infobox. --Koveras Alvane 07:54, March 22, 2010 (UTC) ::Didn't know Wiki Mark up supported If/then functions. Awesome. Thanks. :::It doesn't support them normally. ^^ However, the Wikia wikis usually come with the ParserFunctions extension installed by default, which allows you to use some really useful features. Check out for a list of additional extensions installed here... --Koveras Alvane 18:13, March 22, 2010 (UTC) Adding a RandomImage function Hey Koveras, I was looking at the Extensions that the Wiki supports and I ran across the RandomImage extension. While reading up on it, it says I need to make an edit to the LocalSettings.php file. Can you point me in the direction on how to access that? I know on a normal website (ya know on a server I have FTP access to) how to access the file, but I haven't seen anything that says I have that sort of access to the Wikia servers. I may be crazy, and mental, but I get the job done! 17:49, March 27, 2010 (UTC) :I think only the Wikia staff is allowed to access the .php files of their wikis. What is it exactly that you want to do with that extension? If you are referring to the installation section of that page, you don't need to worry about that: if the extension shows up in our , it has already been installed, and no further changes to LocalSettings.php are required. --Koveras Alvane 20:49, March 27, 2010 (UTC) :: Hmm, I guess I was reading too deep into it. I was looking at the RandomImge extension and was thinking about using it on the hope page to rotate through different opening images like this. You come to Exo-wiki, and it displays File:Wiki-enter-1.jpg You come back to the home page later, and it displays: File:Wiki-enter-2.jpg You come back a third time to the home page and it shows: File:Wiki-enter-3.jpg Or am I misunderstanding the RandomImage operator? :No, you understand it correctly. For this kind of display, you will need following code: :Just copy it to the main page. PS: I took the liberty of editing your message because it was interfering with my code formatting. ^^ --Koveras Alvane 21:15, March 27, 2010 (UTC) : No worries. I was gonna try and format it a bit more so it looked a bit more manageable, but I figured you'd get what I saying and that was the important part. Okay not as random as I was hoping for but it works. I'll probaby be making more entry images and added to the code. Is there a way to set it so that it will NOT display the box around the image? :: Yeah, the randomization seems hindered by the wiki parser cache, which we have no influence upon. :( About the box, I've looked through the code, it seems that the CSS class "thumbimage" is causing the border to appear. We can try overriding it by adding following code to MediaWiki:Common.css: html .thumbimage { border: none !important; } :: Try it and purge the browser cache to see if it works. --Koveras Alvane 21:32, March 27, 2010 (UTC) foo. That didn't work. I'll do some checking and see what I can come up with. :It did work for me. Are you sure you've cleared the browser cache? The border didn't disappear immediately because the browser still had the old Common.css file cached. It's only after you make it reload all style-sheets (Ctrl+F5 should do the trick on most browsers, dunno which one you're using) that the border disappears. Oh, and you will have to revert you second edit to Common.css back to my code. --Koveras Alvane 21:52, March 27, 2010 (UTC) Episde navigation template Hey Kor, I was checking out Memory Alpha (the Star Trek Wiki) and I ran across something I'm curious about. What would it take to make a template that we could put at the bottom of the page of an Episode where you can jump to the next episode in the series, the previous episode in the series, or back to the series main page? I was looking at the system Memory alpha has in place, but from what I can see it's a seperate template that references at least 2 other templates in their system. Here's the code I copied from the code view. How much of this is for MA's system speccifically, how much of it is there due to dealing with multiple series (Original Series, Next Generation, Deep Space Nine, ect) and how much of it would be needed to have a similar template here? edit: here's the link to the template on the MA wikia. http://memory-alpha.org/en/wiki/Template:TNG_nav :It wouldn't be much effort, but I generally find this kind of template inefficient because you can only move one episode forward or backward. I would recommend a navigation template of following form: :This one has the advantage of listing all episodes at once in the correct order. --Koveras Alvane 08:16, March 28, 2010 (UTC) Maybe I'm misunderstanding what you're saying, but you're talking about having of every episode on every episode page? Isn't that a bit absurd? I mean there were 52 episodes, so you're suggesting having 51 links, plus anyother links for the particular episode, on every episode page? I understand your point about the other system only being able to move forward or back one episode at a time, but I think you're forgetting about the middile link in the MA template, where you click on it and it takes you to a listing of the episodes for the entire season. Okay granted, thats an extra click, so it'd be 2 clicks versus 1, but if someone's going to the list anyway I'd say they already have a pretty good idea of what they're looking for anyway. I may be crazy, and mental, but I get the job done! 17:09, March 28, 2010 (UTC) :I do find it no more absurd than Template:Exosquad Characters (118 extra links in every page it is included in), Template:Exosquad Universe (66 links), and Template:Production Staff (also 66 links, all except one of them red). But if you want the Star Trek wiki-style episode navigation template, I can make you one, just say the word. :) --Koveras Alvane 06:30, March 29, 2010 (UTC) Would you hand me that towel please? I seem to have some egg on my face. I had actually forgotten that I had even begun work on the production staff part of the wiki. How about a set up like this as a compromise: It still gives the ubiquitous "Next Episode" and "Previous Episode" links that a casual reader will look for but still gives us a listing of the entire series so those of us who are looking for a particular episode break down can just jump to it. P.S. Excuse the crap-tastic word screen-cap. I'm having a total mental blitz this morning and can not think in any markup language right now. :Well, that can work, of course, but then it would be a good idea to make the full list hideable or even hidden by default... --Koveras Alvane 11:48, March 29, 2010 (UTC) Am I really going mental or did you not reply to my previous message and I reply to that one? :Actually, I did reply, it's just that you deleted my message for whatever reason. :P Restoring it from page history... --Koveras Alvane 19:03, March 29, 2010 (UTC) :OI! okay, 3 hours with a really annoying client followed by 3 hours of sleep followed by an hour on the road followed by scrambling to get everything ready for class followed by a 2 hour aerobics class.... not the best set up for doing any sort of tech work. so you can make the template work like how we've talked about? ::Yeah, I'll see what I can do tomorrow, have to go to sleep now. It's half past ten back here. --Koveras Alvane 20:25, March 29, 2010 (UTC) ::Well, I made something with . Looks ugly as hell and I still dunno how to make that hideable episode list but I can tweak that later. You can start using the template in the meantime. --Koveras Alvane 07:54, March 30, 2010 (UTC) ::You know, the way it turned out, I don't think it really needs to be hideable. It looks pretty neat, if you ask me. ^^ --Koveras Alvane 07:31, April 7, 2010 (UTC) :::I can't say I disagree with ya. I would prefer that the episode lists be hide able just as a point of simplicity. Course now I need to get around to finish the Synopsis page for Pirate Scourge so I can show what sort of material I want on the episode synopsis pages. Maverike Prime 16:32, April 7, 2010 (UTC) Contents box on the main page Kor, I was flipping through other Wikis and I noticed a lot of them use a Character block on the main page. Now I'm not terribly inclined to put the block dead center of the page the way the other wikis seem to do it. But I was doing some thinking about it. And I came up with this: Obviously this is just a mock up but I think it gets the idea across fairly well. What are your thoughts on this? :I love the layout of that table but if we list ALL characters, it will get really huge. ^^ However, we do have a nifty that can help there: it's called ImageMap and it adds links to an image, so basically, you have to upload an image and then place links upon it. I would advise making a small list (like, maybe only the Able Squad) for the main page and a full table on an extra page, then adding links to it using the ImageMap. I must warn, however, that I've never used that extension so I cannot say for sure how well it works. ^^ --Koveras Alvane 19:50, April 1, 2010 (UTC) ::I was never planning on doing the entire character list. Ouch! That would like BE the front page for the wikia. No, I was thinking of doing like Able Squad + Winfield under the Exo-fleet column, Napier, Tyree, Hanley, Madison, Diana, Tanaka and Picasso under the Earth Resistance Column, Phaeton, Draconis, Livia, Shiva, Typhonus, Thrax under the Neo one, and so on. Ya know basically the top 8-10 most recognized characters from that particular faction. I'll take a look at the ImageMap extension. I've never much liked Image Maps in web design, but they have proven useful so we'll see. ::EDIT: Okay I went and glanced through the ImageMap extension. All it does is allow a user to code an image map. In this particular case I think that would be a bit like, as my father says, going around your elbow to get to your thumb. If we were going to be linking form an image with irregulare shapes in it, say a Profile shot of the Assembled Able squad, and I wanted to make it so you could click on J.T. and it would take you to J.T.'s character page. Sure an image map is about the only viable option. But the images aren't irregular. They're rectangles. And they're all the same size. Lemme try it this way. I'll make a junk page and copy the home page code to it and toss the images into it. That way we can see how it works out. ::EDIT x2: Okay, just so I know I'm not completely bonkers, wiki markup does support using an image as a link, right? :: Okay. This isn't exactly how I would like it, but it works for the purpose to displaying what I want to do. Click here :::Looking good. But I noticed a few typos: Madison's first name is "Jinx", not "Jinz" (on the image), and Simbacca should be spelled with a "b" (in the link). ^^ --Koveras Alvane 08:23, April 2, 2010 (UTC) ::::Hmmm, that might explain why the link doesn't work for Simbacca. :::::Indeed. :) --Koveras Alvane 17:18, April 2, 2010 (UTC) Videos on the Toys pages Hey, sending out an opinion call here. I found a guy who's done a bunch of toy reviews of the Exosquad series on YouTube. I sent him a messahe asking him if he would like to join us and write information for the toy pages based on his review. He said he would love to, but that currently time is an issue. He made the suggestion and embedding his videos in the respective Toy pages though in the mean time. So I did a test with the Special Mission Marsh page. So what are you thoughts about it? The Video a good thing, or a bad thing? Maverike Prime 16:46, April 11, 2010 (UTC) :Well, I don't have anything against it. :) If you think those videos are informative and objective enough, I'll trust your opinion. --Koveras Alvane 18:31, April 11, 2010 (UTC) : :Okay foot note for Koveras: Only ask for Technical Assistance. What I was thinking of was using the Videos as a sort of a stop-gap until we get around to actually writing the info for the toy pages themselves. So for the moment, the page would basically be what you see on the J.T. Marsh special mission E-frame page. But over time it would be filled in with more written info so it would resemble like the Character or E-frame pages. The part I'm not sure about is keeping the video on the page after other information is filled in. Any opinion on that part? ::Hey, I'm cool with giving my opinion, but since I'm pretty laissez-faire (unless something goes totally against my views, in which case I become very vocal on my own), I usually tend to just agree with what people come up with and see how it develops. ^^ As for letting the videos stay on the page after textual content is written, I don't see why not. Of course, it'd be more convenient to reduce the video's embedded size from 500px to about 200px when the time comes, but that's my only additional recommendation. ^^ Also, if you have several videos on the same page, the tag may be useful. --Koveras Alvane 19:21, April 11, 2010 (UTC) Images Recently we’ve had some issues with people uploading a great many images and then doing little else then stacking a dozen images in a gallery and sticking the gallery on various pages. This is a Wiki, not a gallery page. The purpose of this Wiki is to provide a central repository of INFORMATION about the series ExoSquad and its’ associated media. While a small image gallery of say 5-8 images on a main character’s page is fine, such as Phaeton or J.T. Marsh, loading several images for a character that only appeared in one episode, such as Glycon, is really pointless. Going forward I would like to put down the following guide lines regarding Image usage on this wiki: Character pages: Character pages may have up to 3 images on the page, but any more than one must be justified by the accompanying information on the page. For instance, if Shiva’s page has one image showing the character himself, and another showing his grave on Venus followed by a third showing the Shiva Clone speaking with Napier, that would acceptable. Glycon’s page having one image of the character himself, another of the character and a third showing the character standing on a Tank would not be acceptable. Main character pages may incorporate an image Gallery. Main Characters shall be considered to include: J.T. Marsh Nara Burns Wolf Bronski Alec DeLeon Maggie Weston Admiral Winfield Marsala Rita Torres Kaz Takagi Admiral Winfield Sean Napier Phaeton Typhonus Draconis Shiva Livia Simbacca Other characters will be considered as asked, but for the time being if they do not appear on this list do not add an image gallery to their page. E-frame pages should have 1 image by default. That first image should be the line-art gif images that are presently available on this wiki. Additional images for E-frames may be included provides they are justified. An example of this would include the AA-500 Falcon. There is the basic version, piloted by J.T. Marsh, and then there’s the Chicago modified version piloted by Eve Hanley. There is one image of the basic version, and one image of the modified version. Going forward I would to enforce this limitations with regards to images. As I said, this is a Wiki, not an image gallery site. The primary focus should be about information, not images. :Heh. There's a better way to do this. :) Start the page Project:Images and put this guideline there (see, for example, how I did it on the Nanoha wiki). Then add a link to it to the main page, and maybe to the MediaWiki:Sitenotice (the text that appears on top of each page, for important announcements and such), too, so that everyone will see it. --Koveras Alvane 21:15, June 3, 2010 (UTC) : :Okay, that's one that is new to me. What's the Project space do? :Maverike Prime 01:43, June 6, 2010 (UTC) ::The Project namespace (which is automatically substituted with the wiki name, but it's the same thing) is used for storing policy, guidelines, and help pages that are not exactly real content but should be on the wiki, anyway. That way, you can always link to such pages, but they are not included in the total content tally. :) --Koveras Alvane 07:22, June 6, 2010 (UTC) Style guide Hey Ko, I'm hoping you provide the kick to the head I need to realise what I'm doing wrong. As an extension of your suggestion for the Project: Images page, I'm starting a Project: Articles page to provide a guide to how to format pages based on what sort of page they are. I'll spare you details, but I seem to be running into a bit of a hickup. I want to provide a block of formatted code that showes wiki-formatting to achieve the desired style like this it's not executing the formatting, but rather showing the code now, the problem I'm running into is even with in the code/preformatted tags any image: tages are still kicking off. How can I address this so the entire block is shown in the code formatting and won't kick off links or images? Maverike Prime 00:38, July 18, 2010 (UTC) :Yeah, you need to use the tag. It will stop the engine from parsing anything inside it. Also, I recommend using tags for code/preformatting, because they are really easier to handle than the spaces at the beginning of every line. Here is an example: like this it's not executing the formatting, but rather showing the code :Hope that works. :) --Koveras Alvane 10:05, July 18, 2010 (UTC) : :Ah, I don't feel quite so annoyed now. I didn't actually know about the nowiki tags before. Thanks. *sighs* and now back to drafting the style guide.